An online glossary would be great! We could indicate current usage and
older usages for the terms to help us understand where some of the
confusion arises.
I like to define the Kingdom Plantae (or Phyta) as those organisms that
produce spores or spore nuclei as a product of meiosis, that have
multicellular sexual reproductive organs, and that retain their zygotes to
develop embryos within the female reproductive tissues. I don't know of
any organism outside the five kingdom Plantae that does both. Coleochaete
and Polysiphonia come close and one could argue that they would fit this
definition, but the multicellular nature of the reproductive structure
comes AFTER the zygote is formed in these two.
It's a little hard for me to put the Phaeophyta in the Protista, but one
could argue for about 10 kingdoms among the Protista.
Janice
***********************************
Janice M. Glime, Professor
Department of Biological Sciences
Michigan Technological University
Houghton, MI 49931-1295
jmglime at mtu.edu
906-487-2546
FAX 906-487-3167
***********************************
